Chapter 33: The Scarecrow's Shadow
The Moorim Branch Association. Top floor conference room of Cheonmuseong, Beijing, China.
Sword Emperor Namgoong Hwi could not hide his mounting anxiety as he stared at the screen hovering before him.
The Moorim Branch Association — the gathering of returnees from Murim scattered across China. He had hastily convened an emergency meeting, but the other returnees' reactions were nothing like what he had anticipated.
"How many times must I say it — the Blood Cult has crossed over into this world!"
Of course, no one could remain composed at those words. Anyone who was a returnee from Murim, at the very least, could not be ignorant of what the name Blood Cult meant.
The problem lay elsewhere entirely.
"The Blood Cult. Undoubtedly a threat, to be sure."
So replied Wi Cheonghan, the cold strategist of the Zhuge Family. The trouble was that his face betrayed not a single trace of tension.
And the reactions of the other returnees — from the orthodox clans, the unorthodox sects, and the Demonic Cult alike — were hardly any different.
"But barely one person. Or was it two you said? What could possibly be done with so few?"
However much Namgoong Hwi governed Beijing, there was no concealing everything that happened in the capital of a nation. And so, each of them had already gathered the basic information about the gate that had appeared in Beijing, each in his own way.
"Sword Emperor, aren't you being a touch oversensitive?"
"Hoho. Quite so. This is the first time I've ever seen our Sword Emperor wear such an expression."
Most dismissed Namgoong Hwi's reaction as much ado about nothing, and some even laughed at him openly to his face.
And then there was this.
"That fellow looks familiar. Wasn't he one of Bunta's men?"
"Bunta? Not even the main headquarters? However grave the matter of the Blood Cult may be, the main force hasn't moved — a mere single man crossed over, and you convene the entire Moorim Branch Association for it? It seems Master Namgoong acted rather hastily this time."
It was no surprise that some reacted this way, given that a few among them knew Kang Samsik belonged to Bunta.
Of course, watching this spectacle, Namgoong Hwi's insides had burned black past the point of charring and were all but reduced to ash.
You witless bastards! That bastard cut off my head before I could even raise a finger!
Namgoong Hwi longed to scream it out on the spot, but the words refused to leave his mouth.
He was one of the most celebrated returnees in all of China — the man who bore the title of Sword Emperor. The moment it came to light that he had died not to some grandmaster of the Blood Cult but to a single strike from a mere Bunta thug, the other returnees of the branch would hardly sharpen their vigilance. No — they would begin to doubt Namgoong Hwi's own strength.
"...One cannot afford complacency in the face of the name Blood Cult. That is, if you have all forgotten the outcome of the Great Murim War."
At those words, the faces of the other returnees began to harden. They too still remembered, vividly, what the Blood Cult had shown during the Great Murim War.
Though, of course, some among them had already lost their heads before the war even ended.
"And there lies a further problem. It doesn't end there."
"What do you mean, further problems?"
So asked Dang Yeonhwa, the Thousand Blossoms Poison Secret, who governed the Sichuan region, picking up on his words.
"The moment that Bunta bastard passed through the gate, he began sprinting toward Korea like a madman."
"Korea? What could that insignificant little country possibly have?"
"...The Blood Heaven Great Emperor. He said the Cult Leader resides there."
At Namgoong Hwi's bombshell, every participant in the video conference was struck speechless.
An unknown nobody from Bunta crossing over, and the Cult Leader of the Blood Cult crossing over — those were problems of an entirely different magnitude.
"Th-the Blood Demon, why would he—?"
"Then it's over! If the Blood Demon has established himself in Korea, the Cult's main force will follow and paint all of Asia red with blood!"
The returnees of the Moorim Branch Association erupted into noisy clamor, as though they had never once laughed at Namgoong Hwi.
And the man who doused cold water over that fevered atmosphere was none other than Wi Cheonghan of the Zhuge Family.
"Hold. Everyone, calm yourselves. Come to think of it, isn't something rather strange here?"
"And what, pray tell, is strange?"
"We ought to ask why the Blood Demon went to that little country. And honestly — is there anyone present who ever witnessed the Blood Heaven Great Emperor personally demonstrate his martial arts?"
No returnee from Murim could answer that question.
Come to think of it, they couldn't. Throughout the Great Murim War, the Blood Heaven Great Emperor Lee Jaeseong had never once shown himself on the battlefield.
Every battle had been handled entirely by his subordinates — the Cult Leader himself had never personally taken the field.
"Now that you mention it, that's true."
"But there were the rumors — that he single-handedly demolished Salmak, or that Unseang the Sword Prince, sect leader of Kunlun, could not endure even thirty exchanges and perished—"
"Those are, quite literally, nothing more than rumors. Honestly, do those stories carry any credibility? The Unseang Sword Prince was Kunlun's pride, a master of the highest order — and he couldn't withstand thirty exchanges? Doesn't that sound far too fantastical?"
The atmosphere flipped in an instant at Wi Cheonghan's words.
"So what you're saying, Wi Cheonghan, is that the Blood Demon — that man — built his reputation on nothing but empty show?"
"Well, that possibility is entirely plausible. And if his retreat to that small country was to keep anyone from discovering how limited his true skill really is—"
"Oh! There is indeed merit to that. Come to think of it, it's all hearsay, isn't it? His actual martial prowess could well be abysmal."
"Hmm, now that I consider it, the situation is hardly a bad one. If we can only seize that scarecrow of a Cult Leader, then even the Cult's terrifying power—"
It took less than five minutes for the eyes of returnees who had been bewildered mere moments ago to be stained with greed.
"Of course, it is too early to relax. I merely meant that there is no need for such excessive worry. The Cult Leader of the Blood Cult has gone to Korea — need we not concern ourselves only with the movements of the hunters there?"
"And we should simply leave that splendid piece on the board untouched?"
"Heh heh. Naturally, the fruit that ripens at the proper moment is ours to harvest."
"..."
Namgoong Hwi felt his breath catch in his throat at the maddening conversation unfolding before his eyes.
A scarecrow?
The man they were now scheming to capture as a "scarecrow" — the one Namgoong Hwi himself had fled from in a desperate sprint — had annihilated an entire team of A-Rank hunters in a single minute.
And even Namgoong Hwi himself had no confidence whatsoever in facing that man again.
"Th-this is... absurd. How can they be so—"
"Hm? Master Namgoong, did you say something just now?"
Namgoong Hwi merely clutched the back of his neck, staring at the Murim returnees who were addressing him.
"Where do you think you're running?"
Inside the C-Rank gate.
I seized the arm of Kuroda Sho, who was scrambling to slip away, using the Geumnasu technique.
"Ugh, l-let go of this! You son of a bitch!"
Having finally grasped the situation, Kuroda Sho let loose a torrent of curses.
He thrashed desperately to break free, but my grip held his arm fast like a shackle, showing no intention of letting go. Watching him keep lunging toward that suspicious sliding door, I dragged him even further away.
"Running where? You crawled in here on your own legs — now you'll see this through to the end."
Crack.
I snapped his arm and slammed him down into the ground.
"Gyaaaaaaah!"
A scream tore from Kuroda's mouth as he tumbled across the gate's rough dirt floor. In the same instant, the weathered sliding door floating in midair vanished without a trace, dissolving with a tearing sound.
"You b-bastard piece-of-shit bug! Die! Just die already!"
Kuroda, rising to his feet with me still gripping one of his arms, shrieked with a face twisted in pure malice.
I could see the true qi shifting within the cornered man's body. At the same moment, cerulean energies began gathering all around me.
So this is the ability my brother-in-law mentioned.
The instant the mana bullets clustered around me mercilessly hurled themselves at my body—
"Uncle!"
Seo Yeon called out to me in a startled voice, but I did not answer her. I simply released the true qi within my body outward.
BOOM!
The things called mana bullets struck my body one after another, their explosions shaking the air.
"Hahh... hahaha! How do you like that! To think a nobody like you—"
The moment Kuroda's face froze solid was the instant he saw it — panting, wearing that vicious grin, and yet I stood unscathed.
Dozens of mana bullets had hammered against my body, and I had not suffered so much as a scratch.
"...Th-that's a lie."
A hollow voice spilled from Kuroda's lips.
I gathered my energy lightly and strode toward him. His mana bullets had never struck my body in the first place — they had crashed into a barrier formed in the space less than a handspan from my skin and fizzled out there.
Body Protective Astral Qi.
If something as trashy as his mana bullets could pierce it, the technique would never have dared to call itself "astral qi" at all.
"Th-this is impossible. H-how? Some kind of item? You must have an item—"
"Items? That's exactly why you're this weak — relying on such trifling little toys."
Thud.
I kicked off the ground and drove my fist straight into his face.
"Gyaaaaaah! D-damn you!"
With a deeply satisfying crunch, I saw the bridge of his nose collapse as Kuroda screamed. I kicked the wailing man as he writhed on the ground.
"Ugh—khak!"
Pure, unadorned violence — no mana, no internal energy, nothing invested in it but raw force.
After only a few blows, the mask of swaggering villainy he had been wearing began to shatter with almost laughable ease. Kuroda, beaten into a bloody pulp, pressed his hands together and began to crawl.
"P-please spare me. I w-was wrong. P-please, I beg you."
The sight of him trembling and even wetting himself was so ridiculous that I simply looked down at him in silence.
Whatever his past may have held, the fact remained unchanged: he was a madman who had tried to kill innocents for his own purposes.
I ground my foot into the side of his head and asked in a voice gone cold and still.
"Babel. Everything you know about the organization you belong to — spill it. Then I'll send you off painlessly."
"B-Babel?"
At my question, Kuroda lifted his swollen face and looked up at me.
"I d-don't know! I was merely invited by them, that's all—"
I casually used my internal energy to blow off one of his fingers.
So that works, huh?
It was thanks to channeling true qi in a manner similar to what he had done, producing a fairly convincing little explosion.
"From now on, every time you lie, another finger goes flying."
"It's tr-true! I was only invited to that space through the dark web, barely anyone knows anything detailed about them— GYAAAAH!"
I stomped on the wound where his finger had been. Kuroda began foaming at the mouth with a sound like a pig being slaughtered.
Judging from the terror carved into his eyes, he didn't seem to be lying.
But still.
"Then what about those eyeballs floating around over there? You don't know about those either?"
"Hup!"
Kuroda sucked in his breath with a startled expression at my words. Far away, the eyeball that had been watching me and him seemed to realize its identity had been exposed and began retreating swiftly.
But—
Pop.
The instant I clenched my fist, the eyeball burst in midair, and its blood rained down to the ground.
"...G-Ghost. He's with Babel. He entered before me, so he'll know more than I do."
At those words from Kuroda, I let out a short, dry laugh.
"And? Do you know where he is?"
At my question, Kuroda nodded his head quickly.
"E-emergency! An unidentified intruder has breached the border line!"
Near the Military Demarcation Line at the northern edge of the Korean Peninsula, where a razor-sharp cordon stretched across the land.
The North Korean awakened unit guarding it had descended into sheer panic.
"Open fire! Shoot him dead, now!"
Dozens of rifle rounds tore through the darkness, and mixed among them were the skills of the awakened.
But the opponent simply ignored the attacks raining down on him and marched unerringly southward.
"Ahaha! These annoying flies just keep crawling out, don't they? Endless, I swear!"
Kang Samsik.
Having crossed the sea from China's Shandong Province and landed in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, he had spent days on the run, nose twitching, chasing nothing but the scent of the Cult Leader.
When the sea appeared, he swam. When land appeared, he ran. And whenever someone appeared to obstruct him along the way—
CRACK—! BOOM!
"Gyaaaah!"
He simply smashed through them and pressed onward. That was his way.
Strange, this is. I clearly crossed over into another world, so how is it that this land's very shape so closely resembles the Central Plains?
Ever since passing through the gate, Kang Samsik had been feeling an odd sense of déjà vu. Skyscrapers lined the horizons, to be sure — but the flow of the mountain ranges, the winding curves of the rivers, all of it looked as though a chunk of the Central Plains had been carved out and transplanted wholesale into this world.
And the strange things did not end there.
Creatures with no foundation in martial arts whatsoever, spewing their petty tricks through bizarre meridians?
That was precisely how the awakened of Earth appeared in Kang Samsik's eyes. Moreover, though the other side was clearly speaking an entirely foreign tongue, it reached Kang Samsik's ears perfectly translated — so of course everything felt strange.
"Eh, whatever. Once I meet the Cult Leader, I'll know everything anyway."
Kang Samsik judged it that simply, then twitched his nose again. He possessed no capacity for untangling complicated matters, and the Cult Leader knew everything there was to know.
"Haah, the scent's getting thicker! Almost there."
At the faint scent drifting in from somewhere to the south, a smile began spreading across Kang Samsik's face.
"A m-monster."
"What did I tell you — why do you people keep bothering a man who's just trying to go about his way? What a nuisance."
So saying, Kang Samsik crushed the head of the man staring at him in horror, and simply resumed his march south.